Pausing to read...

[Digby]

Since modern TV allows you to pause and rewind etc, I find myself often pausing to read an on-screen flash of a newspaper or the briefest glimpse of a tax return etc (add anything here - basically, anything not on screen long enough for you to read) and tonight, as I walked in to see if the wife wanted a brew, Eastenders was on and for what was less than half a second, a message flashed up on a phone after someone was shown deleting a comment they had posted to the local area group page.

This was the message...



The odd thing is, if you google the number, it shows up here as a potential spam / scam number...



On an evening with not much going on, I was left wondering who picked that number to display. Is it likely it's now a dead number? If it is a dead number, how would you find out? I didn't call it, I just found it more interesting than the program.

[daddy cool]

I've heard that there's a few "fake/dead" mobile phone numbers that are routinely used in TV programs - so probably quite a few folk have tried calling them.

[Defcon5]

Ofcom have issued dedicated number ranges for use in TV/Film etc

It’s so the show doesn’t make up a number that is inadvertently someone’s actual number

These ranges are published, meaning they can be subsequently used by scammers whom are manipulating their CLI (displayed calling number)

[thegreenhell]

Same as American shows and films always using numbers starting 555-

[ShredderXLE]

Thoughts and prayers for Smokey

[Richard-390a0]

ShredderXLE said:

Thoughts and prayers for Smokey

Shared south coast (lol)

[Richard-390a0]

It's the same with newspapers as this is a well known example of a 'cleared to use on screen' paper...

[droopsnoot]

Digby said:

The odd thing is, if you google the number, it shows up here as a potential spam / scam number...

Most of the phone numbers I've googled do the same, even when it's someone like British Gas or another company that clearly isn't a scammer. Lots of people with time on their hands thinking "best to be on the safe side" and ruin the whole point of the list.

Back to the topic, I often also pause or rewind TV to try to read stuff like that, often I wonder whether other people can just read them in the couple of milliseconds that they're on screen and it's just me that's a bit slow.